US defense officials did not find out about the movie until after the fact, causing consternation at the Pentagon, which has an office that vets scripts and negotiates cooperation deals with Hollywood producers.

Although troops have appeared in movies before, such as "Black Hawk Down," this film ventures into uncharted territory, possibly jeopardizing the anonymity that the special forces have sought to safeguard.

"It's one thing to be filmed parachuting out of a plane, but it's another thing to be parachuting and land on the red carpet," a defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

Premiering on February 24, the action-packed movie tells the fictional story of SEALs rescuing a kidnapped CIA agent from a Central American drug cartel, only to uncover a terror plot against the United States by a Chechen jihadist.

The project started out as a vaguely defined recruiting movie with directors Mike "Mouse" McCoy and Scott Waugh filming the SEALs training exercises, but eventually evolved into a full-blown feature film.

The initial plan was to hire actors to play the special operations warriors, but McCoy's production company, the Bandito Brothers, managed to persuade active duty commandos to take the leading roles.

Scott Waugh, Founder of Bandito Brothers, was drawn to filmmaking at a young age. As the son of the original Spiderman, Fred Waugh, Scott began to dabble as a filmmaker at the young age 12. Since earning a B.F.A. from the University of California at Santa Barbara, Scott has worked as a producer, director, editor, cameraman, and stuntman. In 2006, he founded Bandito Brothers, an independent content creation studio, with his business partner Mouse McCoy. In January 2012, Variety named him one of its 10 Directors to Watch.

Scott became a stuntman in 1982 and retired in 2005. He has been involved in more than 150 film and television productions in various capacities and was fortunate to live on sets with directors Michael Mann, Steven Spielberg, and Oliver Stone.

As a commercial director, Scotts niche is showcasing human stories within incredible action. He has worked with three of the five U.S. Military branches: the Navy, Air Force, and Marines Corps. Scott has developed advertising media with Electronic Arts with their games Battlefield 3 and Medal of Honor and has also worked with other established brands such as Ford, Mountain Dew, BFGoodrich, NASCAR, and the NHL.

not exactly the same thing but kevin costner’s movie THE GUARDIAN used real coast guard rescue swimmers in the movie. they played some of the trainers. these guys are bad ass. when the navy doesn’t leave port because of the weather, whhen the air force doesn’t fly because of the weather these guys and there helo drivers GO OUT

According to the promo piece on Fox News, they use live fire with real bullets and use real Seal tactics. Just so any of those “Catholics” are watching and can take some pointers back to there masters in Terhan.

10
posted on 02/19/2012 3:55:37 PM PST
by PIF
(They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)

Well, as a former NavSpecWar boat guy, I am looking forward to seeing actual SEALs showing the fake Hollyweird types how real men do real tasks. And, just so there's no mistaken identity, SEALs do not drive or fight the small craft that insert or extract them — SWCCs [Special Warfare Combatant Crewmen] do.

From all my contacts in the NSWC community, “Act of Valor” promises to be a very good film. It will be the first I have actually seen in over five years.

One bit of trivia about the 1990 Lewis Teague film “Navy SEALs”: the actual SEAL capabilities demonstrated in the movie [HALO jump, lockout and insertion from a submarine and others] were not performed by Hollywood stunt men. Actual retired SEALs or SEALs on leave were hired to do the actual work because the stuntmen considered these activities TOO dangerous.

As cool as the trailer looks, I nevertheless have reservations about using SEALS and showing SEAL tactics. I assume they havent shown their best tricks, but still...

Your concerns are shared by some number of people (although apparently not many enough by the look of things). One of them, retired Army Lt General James Vaught, told Admiral William H. MacRaven (Head of Special Operations Command) that 'One of these days, if you keep publishing how you do this, the other guy's going to be there ready for you. Mark my words. Get the hell out of the media.' There have been other members of the military who have also not been too pleased with all the attention the SEALs, in particular Tier 1 Assets like DEVGRU, have been getting. Not just the movie, but in particular how mission details are released in the media. While most terrorists and other assorted bad-guy types are not necessarily the sharpest knives in drawer, there are some that can be able to distill good information to some degree. Whether that degree is sufficient to save their hides is a matter open to debate, but that they can get some information that may have some pertinence is not. Not from the movie per se ...I think the big issue is on the media reports and not on the movie (which can be seen as an impressive recruiting tool for the most part).

As an aside, I wonder how the OTHER Tier 1 Asset thinks about all the attention DEVGRU has been receiving. By this I am talking about the Combat Applications Group, or CAG (known to most as Delta Force). DEVGRU has gotten series attention, even if the media is still using its old name, while the mention of CAG would be met by a 'what' and even using Delta Force would probably have the average person thinking it is some airline crew (and maybe older souls thinking of some poorly acted Chuck Norris flick from the '80s).

I would bet serious money that the folks over at CAG are 100% ok with their anonymity, and they know the only reason DEVGRU was used for these missions is primarily because Admiral McRaven used to be a Navy SEAL himself, and as most people would do when faced with a difficult mission, he selected a Tier 1 outfit that he knew quite well. I am certain if the Commander of SOC had been Army there is a good chance that the other Tier 1 outfit, CAG, would have been selected. All the same, DEVGRU and CAG are real world supermen, although one of them is far more visible than the other. For good or bad.

I've never heard Rush more effusive about anything than he was the other day urging in the strongest terms that his listeners go see this film.

Reading between the lines in the linked article, it looks to me like Administration brass is not happy with this pro-American movie. Methinks as Obama is learning more about it, the word went down to make things tough on those officers who were personally and unilaterally involved in permission for various parts of the movie.

I look for some heads to roll and some Obama retaliation down the line of command.....especially if the film goes viral and is universally acclaimed.

Bambi doesn't like the military. Would anyone think that in his laughable role as Commander-in-Chief he will be happy that this patriotic movie was made without his personal imprimatur?

I'm watching for the state-contrelled media to sense Obama's mind as it always does......and to start panning this movie with the intent to destroy it at the box office.

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